She's Gone
by AZGirl
Summary: The illness of a friend's mother causes Steve to reflect on his own mother's death. Season 1 spoilers. Takes place before the end of season two.


**Title**: She's Gone

**Summary**: The illness of a friend's mother causes Steve to reflect on his own mother's death.

**Disclaimer**: Hawaii Five-0 is not mine. I'm just borrowing the concepts and characters for a little while.

**Spoilers**: Season 1 spoilers. Takes place before the end of season two.

**A/N**: Thank you _ncismom_ for the beta (and the rest too!). Remaining mistakes are my fault.

I should probably attach a 'tissues may be needed' warning to this one.

**ooooooo**

One foot in front of the other. Avoiding the irregularities of the ground. Breathe in; breathe out. Finding a rhythm.

Passing an older couple out for a walk. A college-age woman out running with her dog coming towards me. Glimpses of people out surfing. Surrounding traffic increasing in volume.

Blue sky. Slightly windy. White, fluffy clouds. Another perfect day in paradise.

The ringing of a door bell. Seeing that police officer's face. Photos of a burnt out shell of a car. A life forever changed.

As much as I want to lose myself in my running, I realize the attempt has backfired on me. I wanted to forget, but instead of concentrating on my movements or my surroundings, I find myself thinking about things I would really rather not remember right now. Perhaps it would've been better to choose alcohol over exercise to exorcise my demons.

Regardless of the means I use to try not to think about her, memories of my mother tend to crop up pretty regularly now that I've returned to the Islands. The house I live in is full of those memories, and the longer I'm back, the more it seems to also be filling with nightmares. Out on a case or just out and about on my own, it's impossible to avoid all the places I'd ever been with her. I even find myself occasionally drawn to visit the 'hidden' places she had loved and had shared with me, the places on the island that seemed to have called to her.

In joining the Reserves and coming back to the Islands full-time to head Five-0, I've managed to reconnect with the land and the people that I had been forced to leave behind nearly twenty years ago. Once things had settled down a bit in my new life – or at least settled into a sort of controlled chaos – I started looking up a few old friends. With the resources I have at my disposal, it was easy to find them. Most had moved away to the Mainland, but the ones I'd been closest to had remained on the Islands.

The Lani family had been my family's neighbors for a long as I could remember, and Evan and I had been friends ever since the two of us had met on our first day of school. Though not as close a friend as Danny, Evan had still been an important part of my grade school years. When we'd reached high school though, we had drifted apart a little, given the different interests we'd each developed. Yet, despite those differences, we had been friends for too long to completely lose touch and often met up to do our homework together.

After my mother died – was murdered – Evan had provided a port in the storm raging around me. He was someone I could be myself around and pretend, if only for a little while, that my life hadn't fundamentally changed. I spent a lot of time at my friend's house when things got too difficult to handle with my father's grief and his determination to work himself to death.

At first, I wouldn't accept anything from Mrs. Lani, or Anne, as I was later told to call her. She was too much like my mother in personality, and I just couldn't deal with that. I stayed away from her as much as possible and rebuffed any and all of her attempts to be my friend or to help me through that difficult time. As the days passed when my mother's tragic death became not so painful anymore, things got better between us. I learned to accept her help and friendship though I still refused to accept any of her attempts to comfort me. Anne was one of my first adult friends.

When my dad sent Mary and me away, I managed to keep in touch for a while, but over time my letters to both Evan and Anne went unanswered. It wasn't until I had reconnected with Evan that I found out it was due to a lot of upheaval in all our lives. While he was finishing college, Evan's dad, Kai, had passed away suddenly, and Anne had moved into a smaller house. Unfortunately this corresponded to a time when I had first begun my career in the Navy after Annapolis and our letters never properly got forwarded to our new addresses. We each thought the other had decided to not keep in touch anymore. Evan and Anne had been my last true link to the Islands since my father and sister rarely communicated with me outside of our birthdays and Christmas.

More than fifteen years later, Evan and I have finally reconnected. It's been really interesting to rediscover that friendship and find out what has been happening in each other's lives all these years. He had, of course, heard about my father's murder and the formation of Five-0, and I learned about his career as a professor at the University of Hawai'i.

When I asked about Anne, Evan had to give me some bad news. Several years ago his mother, who had been much older than my parents, had a major stroke which had greatly affected one side of her body. She regained, to some degree, most of her motor skills, but unbeknownst to either her or Evan, her body had quietly begun to deteriorate and shut down both physically and mentally. Dementia and Alzheimer's along with a host of other physical problems had begun to take her life little by little.

I asked Evan if it would be alright for me to visit her the next time my duties allowed. He replied that his mother was still very outgoing despite everything and loved to have visitors. I resolved to see her as soon as possible.

Eventually Five-0's case load allowed for some time off and I took advantage of it to pay a visit to Mrs. Lani. Seeing Anne that first time after so many years was kind of a shock to the system. The last time I'd seen her had been the day my father had sent Mary and me to the Mainland. Evan's mom had been so robust and full of life. Her crooked smile and sly sense of humor had been out in full force in an attempt to help me get through the day in which I left only home I'd ever known behind. Nearly twenty years later, Anne was frail and but a shadow of the woman she had once been, of the woman I fondly remembered. Her smile was still there, but that spark of life in her eyes that had so reminded me of my mother was now gone. I couldn't help it when the long thought gone grief over my mother's death briefly resurfaced.

But who is the luckier one? I had my mother for sixteen years before she was taken away from me in a flash of light and a ball of fire. Evan has enjoyed the comfort of a loving parent in his life for an extra twenty years, but when my mother died my father became distant and just when things were beginning to become some kind of new normal, I was sent away to the Mainland and set on the course for the life I've had in the Navy. At the time, it had felt like I'd lost the rest of my family; it had seemed like I was all alone in the world.

As the years went by, my father and I had reconnected and had a decent, if long-distance, relationship. The day Hesse took my dad away from me, the sound of the gun firing through the phone made it seem like the shot had actually gone through my heart. Guilt, regret, and a host of other negative emotions had to be smothered so that I could continue to do my duty and help the wounded out there on that South Korean landscape. Released from duty for compassionate leave, I headed home and the loneliness that had plagued me so often in my life since I'd left Hawai'i came back full force. Returning back to the Islands on the day of the funeral, though I may have been alone in nearly every sense of the word, I still ended up meeting people that would eventually become my 'ohana, including a blond haole that would not only become my partner but a best friend and brother to me.

That first visit to see Anne had been a great reunion – like I'd reclaimed another part of my life that I'd thought long gone. She was much thinner than I'd remembered, less able to get around on her own two feet, but it was still her despite the lapses in memory. That day she knew who I was, and we caught up on all the years we'd missed out on since we'd fallen out of touch.

Over the subsequent months, as Five-0's caseload and my quest for justice for my family permitted, I occasionally visited her – sometimes with Evan but many times without. I could easily sense her decline, which was punctuated by her increasing mental lapses and her decreasing ability to do things for herself. It made me sad to see a woman who had once been so alive to now be hanging on by such a slender cord to life.

Each time I saw Anne, I wondered which was better – the sudden loss of someone in the prime of their life or this gradual deterioration? Was it a blessing or a curse to have your parents taken away as quickly as mine had been taken?

A few weeks ago, Evan called me sounding very upset. He informed me that his mother had decided to not continue her dialysis treatments, and after much discussion with her, he had decided to honor her wishes. Without being told, I of course knew what this meant – soon Anne would be leaving this life behind. Evan supported his mother's decision even though he sometimes wondered if the Alzheimer's wasn't influencing it and making her forget it was needed to remain alive. Apparently though she was adamant about not going anymore, and I had no choice but to begin preparing myself to lose another important person in my life – someone who I had, despite my initial reaction to her after my mother's death, always kept a special place in my heart for over the years.

Soon after that decision, Anne was moved to hospice and I visited her the first chance I could. The second I saw her sitting in her wheelchair, I could see that the slender cord holding her to her life was rapidly fraying – it wouldn't be long now. It was a heartbreaking visit in so many ways, and I could tell Evan was just barely keeping it together for his mom's sake. That time she could still recall who I was and she squeezed my hand. The visit had been as pleasant as it could be in those circumstances due to her tendency to fall asleep in the short time between one moment and the next.

A week later, I was able to go and see her again. The frayed cord connecting her to life seemed to now only have a very few strands left intact. If it was this difficult for me to see Anne like this, how much more heartbreaking and soul crushing must this be for her son? He was so tender with her, talking to her as if she still had her full mental faculties available to her. Evan handled her with the kind of gentleness I don't think I've seen before between an adult child and a parent. She showed no recognition of me and was too weak to move too much. After I'd left, it had taken a long time for the tightness in my throat to ease.

At one point Anne, who had not spoken for many hours, put her hand on Evan's forearm and croaked out her husband Kai's name. Evan reminded her that his father was not there but that she would see him soon. After several moments, she patted his arm once and, after a brief struggle, she finally looked her son in the eyes and said his name. I couldn't see her face from where I was sitting, but the look of anguish on Evan's face was… Maybe Danno could describe it, but I just don't have the words right now, if ever.

A blessing or a curse? Was I blessed to lose my mom so suddenly in the prime of her life or was I cursed because I missed out on all of those years with her? I still would've eventually left home and not seen her as much, but I also still would've been able to get to know her as an adult. I would've known her as a person and not just as a parent, perhaps we could've been friends as well as mother and son. Perhaps my family wouldn't have become estranged, and just maybe my father wouldn't have been murdered. There would have been no need for me to be on this quest to find my parents' killers.

A blessing or a curse? Having my mother taken away from my family so suddenly we didn't have to watch her steady decline due to age or illness. Until I'd seen those photos of my mother's burnt out car with her—. Until I'd seen those pictures, my last image of my mother was of her heading out the front door of the house wearing a brightly-colored sundress smiling and saying that she'd be back soon. I never saw her alive again, and in my mind's eye, she is forever young. Evan, on the other hand, has had to watch his mother slowly decline both physically and mentally. He's had to watch her suffer through these last years, months, weeks, and days with a host of medical problems. This last week especially it has seemed to me that Anne has been suffering despite the palliative care she's been receiving. For both her sake and Evan's, I pray for mercy – that her suffering ends soon so she can be with her husband and the rest of her family again.

A blessing or a curse? Though my mother left my life too soon, I would never, _ever_, trade away those sixteen years I had with her. In another life I might have had fifty years with my parents, but in this life I was granted only what seemed to be a few short years with my mother, and because of his distant behavior, with my father as well. Being a teenager at the time, I never really fully appreciated what I had until it was ripped away from me. How different would my life had been had my mother lived? I guess I'll never know the answer to that question. One thing I do know, and that I'm still learning to accept, is that without my mother's death, the chain of events that has led me to my 'ohana would not have started. I would never, _ever_, trade those years away for a different life, but if I had known about my future 'ohana, then just maybe the loneliness I felt all those years would have been more bearable.

One foot in front of the other.

Blue skies; a slight breeze.

A man in his forties about to pass by me.

The ringing of my cell phone as I keep an eye on my fellow runner.

I come to a stop and pull out my phone from my pocket. Without looking at the caller I.D., I push the accept button and say, "McGarrett."

On the other end of the line, I hear a shaky indrawn breath an equally shaky exhale before the words finally come.

"She's gone."

ooooooo

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die…" ~ Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 ESV

"And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away." ~ Revelation 21:4 NKJV

**ooooooo**

_For my mom…_

**ooooooo**

_**Thanks for reading!**_


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